FDA-D.1718-2023

Parts

Object number

FDA-D.1718-2023

Object type

drawing

Identification

Title

Venta de Baños

Title Type

Common name

Description

Drawn / painted landscape view, including a flat-topped hill in the distance; a small town at the foot of the hill

Comments

Venta de Baños is a small town in central Spain. Muirhead Bone and his wife, Gertrude, travelled in Europe extensively. The couple collaborated on several books and this is one of a series of drawings that Muirhead produced for possible inclusion in Old Spain (1936). Gertrude provided the text and Muirhead the illustrations for this lavish two-volume publication. The work was reissued in 1938 as Days in Old Spain, a smaller single volume. In 1930 and 1931 two large exhibitions of Bone’s drawings of Spain were held at Colnaghi’s in London. Although Bone’s image of the village of Venta de Baños was not used as an illustration, the nearby early medieval Visigothic church of San Juan Bautista is described in Gertrude’s text. At the bottom of this drawing (now covered by the mount) the artist refers to this church, which he notes is the ‘oldest church in Spain’.

Description

Dimensions

height (actual size): 213mm
width (actual size): 278mm

Inscription

Signed lower right: 'Muirhead Bone’; inscribed below image lower left: 'Venta de Banos'; lower right: 'oldest church in Spain'

Material

paper
watercolour
pencil

Materials & techniques note

Watercolour over pencil on paper

Production

Person

Bone, Muirhead, 1876 - 1953 (Artist)

Technique

painted

History and association

Object history note

Provenance: with Thomas Agnew & Sons, London;; collection of Richard Henry Allen Amis (K.S. 1945-50; 1932-2018); by whom bequeathed to Eton College

Exhibited: 'An Etonian Collector: The Richard Amis Bequest', The Verey Gallery, Eton College, 16 November 2023 to 24 March 2024